Somehow I missed this - HuffPo passes on news that, according to a recent FBI report, a drug arrest is made in the United States every eighteen seconds:
Someone is arrested in the United States for a drug-law violation every 18 seconds, an FBI report released Monday shows.
More than four-fifths of those arrests were for possession only and nearly half were for possession of marijuana. Of the 847,863 marijuana arrests -- one every 37 seconds -- 89 percent were for possession alone.
And those folks do spend time in jail. University of Maryland drug policy expert Peter Reuter told the Huffington Post that in Maryland, roughly a third of those arrested for marijuana possession spend time in jail, from a night to several days or more.
There are profound consequences to spending even a short stint in jail. "You can get get over an addiction, but you will never get over a conviction," said Jack Cole, a retired undercover narcotics detective who now heads the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) in a statement.
Eeesh. Of course, LEAP has its own thoughts on the topic:
Last December, LEAP commissioned a report by a Harvard University economist that found that legalizing and regulating drugs would inject tens of billions a year into the U.S. economy. In California, medical marijuana is currently taxed and generates several hundred million dollars per year in revenue for the state treasury.
It's not just taxable revenue, obviously - it's the opportunity cost of the enforcement efforts required to bust someone every 18 seconds, the legal efforts required to prosecute, and the additional resources required to keep them in jail for some inane number of years because of it. But yeah, here in the land of opportunity, a bust every 18 seconds has got to start looking like a preposterous waste of serious money at some point.
Oh wait, it started looking like that a long time ago. Never mind then...
